Plasma display panels are currently expected to replace cathode ray tubes for many uses such as televisions, monitors, and other video displays. One important advantage of plasma display panels is that a relatively large display area can be provided with relatively minimal thickness as compared to cathode ray tubes.
The general construction of plasma display panels includes generally sheet like front and back glass substrates having inner surfaces that oppose each other with a chemically stable gas hermetically sealed therebetween by a seal between the substrates at the periphery of the panel. Elongated electrodes covered by a dielectric layer are provided on both substrates with the electrodes on the front glass substrate extending transversely to the electrodes on the back glass substrate so as to thereby define gas discharge cells or pixels that can be selectively energized by an electrical driver of the plasma display panel. The panels can be provided with phosphors to enhance the luminescence and thus also the efficiency of energizing the panels. The phosphors can also be arranged in pixels having three subpixels or gas discharge cells for respectively emitting the primary colors red, green, and blue to provide a full color plasma display panel.
The conventional construction of back glass substrates for plasma display panels has elongated gas discharge troughs and barrier ribs that space the troughs from each other so as to thus generally isolate each column of pixels within each trough from the columns of pixels on each side thereof and thereby provide good color separation and pixel definition. The gas discharge trough and barrier rib construction can be inexpensively provided by a known thick film printing technique utilizing thick film electrodes typically made of silver, nickel or aluminum paste and covered by dielectric paste for electrical insulation. However, this thick film printing technique, although relatively inexpensive, is difficult to apply to large areas requiring fine patterning due to deformation of print screens and the substrate itself.
Another way in which the back glass substrate gas discharge trough and barrier rib construction can be provided is by first applying thick film electrodes on the substrate and then applying a thick film dielectric glass layer that is typically then fired. A thick film barrier material film frit is then applied and dried. Thereafter, a photoresist film is laminated on the dried frit layer. The photoresist layer is then patterned by a conventional photolithographic process to provide a protecting layer prior to sandblasting that removes material to provide the gas discharge trough and barrier rib construction that is then heated to provide sintering.